Well, the basic news is quite short: K3b is now able to burn DVDs. But this would be a little too short. ;) So for all of you who do not know what K3b is (the name does not really mean anything): K3b is (was) a CD burning application for KDE (screenshots). It uses cdrecord and cdrdao for actually burning the CDs but implements its own methods for all CD information retrieval functionality.

Now that this has been clarified I present the list of DVD related features in the new K3b version 0.10:

DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) support through the dvd+rw-tools by Andy Polyakov which is released under the GPL (yes, no strange security keys or patched cdrecord version for DVD burning anymore).

Support for all DVD-R(W) writing modes: DAO, Incremental Sequential (used for multisession), andRestricted overwrite (use a DVD-RW just like a DVD+RW)

Automatic burning speed selection based on the media's capabilities.

DVD-R and DVD+R multisession burning (be aware that most DVD-ROM drives are not able to read multiple sessions)

DVD copy. No VideoDVD shrinking yet. That means you may not copy a DVD-9 (most VideoDVDs) to a DVD-4 (4,3 GB DVD
media). But this is planned and will be implemented in one of the next versions unless some legal stuff stops us.
Perhaps someone with a better legal background could help me here.... ;)

DVD-RW and DVD+RW formatting which can also be done automatically before burning.

Before I get too many mails about this: There is no VideoDVD project yet but it is planned. I am just not
sure yet how to realize it from the users point of view.

So if you own a DVD burner please check out the new K3b Homepage and get the latest
version (as of this writing it's 0.10).

Please, be less verbose by default, a dumb user like me is allways offended by the way burning is showed : lines explaining the way cdrecord is going should be hidden by default, with an expert button to show them.
Because I get warnings like "I/O error occured, but it may not be a problem", that just keep K3B away from being a real allday use application.

When I switched from Windows, K3B was just beginning to be good.
I used CD BakeOven a bit but it had lots of problems. Audio CD were
broken afterwards and so on. Then I switched to K3B and I liked it
a lot more but it had lots of bugs so I kept CD BakeOven just in case.
That's not necessary anymore: K3B is easier than on Windows IMO.
I have never had any problems with this. A big Thank You from me, too.
One improvement perhaps: When I switched from Windows I wanted
to burn CD's right from the start. When I ran K3B Setup the page about
users really confused me a lot. I first thought I had to add "root" by clicking
on "add user" because the text said "need to be run as root". I know how
it its meant of course right now, but perhaps it could be changed to something
easier to understand for novices like:

K3B uses auxiliary applications to burn a CD.Running these auxiliary
applications require root privliges by default. So by default only root
can burn a CD. K3bSetup recommends that you create a dedicated CD burning user group and add all users who want to burn CD's to that group. K3bSetup will
then change permissions to all auxiliary applications automatically so that
they are accessible for this group without root permissions. No other
permissions than CD burning will result from being a member of that group.
All users in the list will afterwards be able to use K3B without ever having to
enter a root password.

When I first discovered this piece of software, I too wondered what it could mean and my final guess was: "Ku Klux Klan Burner". Knowing how the KKK loves to burn other people's houses, it would make sense.

So, please tell me I'm being totally paranoïd and you're not one of the KKK's fans ! Please ! Or tell me that you want to burn the KKK members :)

There is no need for that:
Just try "mkfs.ext2 /dev/dvd" and "mount /dev/dvd /mnt -o noatime" (noatime to minimize writing on disk) and use that thing like a normal hard disk:
You can then use konqueror or rsync or whatever to copy data on that disk.
After that "umount /mnt" and you are done.
Of course you could also create an iso9660 file system, but that's boring ;-)

I think what we are looking for is the ability to do full system backups/restores via k3d maybe alowing us to make bootable recovery dvd's as well all from a few clicks in k3d? (enabling some kind of archive compression as well?)

This weekend I succesfully burned 4 DVDs with K3b from CVS compiled and running on 2.6.0-test4. However, /usr/src/linux still points to the kernel my distro came with, rather than the kernel I'm running right now. I also had to force some modules to be loaded (ide-scsi and sr_mod, I think).